This week we’ll talk about creating cars – where do we start, where do we go from there, what to look out for, and how long it all takes? For Wreckfest, existing cars took about two months to complete – per car. Yes, it really takes that long!

It all begins by, obviously, figuring out what type of car do we want? A sedan? A truck? After we settle on e.g. a muscle car, we dig deeper: what type and style of this particular car type do we want? An olden goldie, or a more modern one? European, American or what? After this part of the process we have an idea of what kind of car we’re looking for, so we can start looking for reference material from their real world counterparts, up to and including blueprints of real cars.

Next up is the basic modeling of the car: modeling the car body without paying too much detail to panel curvatures, specific details and so on. These very basic models have all the obvious parts in place: four tires, bumpers, headlights and all that jazz, and about in the right places, too. It’ll look clunky as heck, but that’s okay, as we’re mostly interested about the overall feel of the car, and not so much of any specific details.

Once everything is modeled and in their right places, we create several variations of the car with different grills, lights and light configurations. The body of the car itself remains untouched, but it’s the small details that give the car that look you come to love, so it pays to create a few variants to be sure that this is what we want. Again, it’s not as much about creating finalized models as it is about giving the car several discernible feels, as all this helps us figure out what would work for this car and what doesn’t.

Once the prototype is ready, we start working on it in earnest. We start tuning curves, adding panels, modeling specific parts like axles and upholstery. Basically every detail will be added at this point – yes, it’ll often be just a rough semblance of what it’ll end up looking, but all parts will be put in place. For example, detailing the drivetrain means that if you flip the car and focus your view on the axles, you will see the brake shoes, springs, suspension parts, bolts, nuts and so on.

Despite the detail, we don’t actually animate that many of these parts, simply because it wouldn’t be cost efficient for the drain it would have on the engine. We totally could, though :)